I wanted to take a look at how many packs it should take to get most of the TGT cards, so I estimated that the set will have the same rarity distribution as GvG (which would give us 43C, 40R, 27E, 22L) and built a little simulation that runs 100,000 'players' through unpacking 1000 packs and tracks their average completion progress per pack. Each card is individually accounted for, and a card is only considered 'complete' if you have the playable max (1 for legendaries, 2 for everything else).

Then I considered how much you could complete by using that dust. Starting at commons and working up to rares, then epics and finally legendaries, each simulated player would craft the cards that they didn't get through packs (this order is to maximize completion). This gives the following adjusted-for-dust curve:

This graph tells you the average dust you would have to spend to get the non-duplicate cards in the next pack. For instance, if you have 299 packs, getting the new cards from the 3rd would cost you an average of 50 dust.

Edit 5: The optimal long-term strategy is going to be to craft legendaries first, consider this graph of completion percentage scaled by dust value (e.g. legendary completion is worth 1600, so having half of the legendaries would give 800 pts, common completion is worth 40, and so on):

Legendaries-first has a slower total-completion rate, but a higher value-rate in terms of dust. The reasoning for this is that you aren't likely to pull duplicate legendaries, but you are likely to pull duplicate commons/rares. Hence, if you craft some commons/rares and then buy more packs, that dust spent crafting is more likely to have been wasted than if you crafted legendaries instead.

Following the pattern on GVG, only half of the cards will be worth playing (much less for the legendaries), so getting the cards you actually need will be massively easier than getting the complete collection.

We really need a Dust it, Keep it, Craft it Sheet upon all cards being revealed.

Dust It, Keep It, Craft IT List.
Cards that are a straight up dust it cause there are 100% useless. A Keep it for cards that could be good or just not worth dusting and Craft it for the cards that you will need to ladder. Really help break the expansion down specially for the F2P guys out there. Maybe a sheets of all cards dust cards grey'ed out, Keep cards are normal and craft it are golden for readability.

It takes at least a week before people find the obviously good and bad cards and about 3 weeks to refine a unique deck like patron warrior. Any list will be mostly worthless until a month after release.

I think it takes longer for the meta to settle after a big expansion. I started playing the game in February when Mech Mage was rampant and I still saw a lot of innovation and meta changes before it finally settled shortly before BRM.

The problem is you won't know what is actually viable in the early stages so you would end up either crafting/getting cards that seems good but not competitive enough or cards that might seem mediocre but ends up valuable.

Troggzor is still an amazing card in his own right, he just doesn't fit into any existing "meta" decks. Meh. Unless you're grinding for legend that doesn't even matter. It's pretty easy to get above rank 10 with silly, homemade decks.

If you have board control and you play him, the game is pretty much over. The problem is KT does a similar thing better and if you have enough board control that he's worth playing, the game is probably won anyway.

Hypothetically, if you have perfect patience, the optimal strategy is to never craft any cards until you have enough dust to craft all missing cards. This ensures that you'll never waste dust crafting a card you would have opened.

They do, but all the cards they've crafted are returned to dust at full refund between packs, and then they craft again. So these results are correct if you don't craft until after buying X number of packs. If you buy, craft, buy again, you will be slightly below these values.

Exactly, it's a little harder for me to predict otherwise, but if you look at the "craft legendaries first" graphs and you craft legendaries first, those numbers should be more accurate over prolonged periods of buying + crafting.

Really only the cards in the first 2 wings of BRM are "must have". You are probably better off saving gold for just the first wing of BRM (which will give you Grim Patron, Emperor Thaurisson, Quickshot, Resurrect, Gang Up, and Dragon's Breath). Then save your gold for TGT packs, before finishing the rest of BRM.

Do you have any dust? I'm guessing the simulation starts with no dust, and your current dust will let you get a some stuff you specifically want but don't pull. I only have 1.5K gold (I can't help playing Arena when I get pissed at Ranked) but I have almost 3k dust now, which can get quite a bit of stuff if you're close to a deck you want with new cards.

You're sad that you saving for something like a month (you can easily average 70-80 gold a day with quests plus winning some games) will net you 30% of the expansion? Isnt that amazing though. I've bought the pre-order and have a little under 3000 gold and I'm stocked as fuck how much of the expansion that will net me.

you have to remember that this is a CCG/Video Game Hybrid. It will never be as expensive as something like MTG (since cards have set individual values -Dust-) and will never be as cheap as other blizzard title expansions.

I wonder how the math works out for people below an infinite win rate. For example at what win rate does it become optimal to do arena when you only need TGT packs. So, if I have a 3, 4, 5 or 6 win average but I only want TGT should I buy packs of should I do arena to be gold efficient.

Well if you can afford it I'd start by getting the pre-purchase deal (which you may be able to reduce in price with Amazon promos). Then, do arenas to learn the new cards during the first few weeks. Eventually grind ranked while buying packs. Occasional arena/tavern brawl to take breaks from ranked.

TGT 50 pack pre-order, 2000 gold saved so far and 40 more packs being purchased at launch. 110 packs total, I'm hoping I at least pull 5 legendaries. Come on RNGesus, I've been going to the church of RNGesus and saying my RNGprayers!

What statistics did you use for rarity distribution (assuming you took that into account). Also, did you factor in the possibility of opening gold cards? This should lower the total number of packs you need to open (I'd simulate dusting all gold cards for ease, since they will at least give you enough dust to make the regular version of the card).

Yeah, thanks, I totally understand its not gonna make a huge difference, but if it saves a couple of packs, well, I'm FTP so gold is gold right.

Although, adding golden commons, golden rares and golden epics to the rares/golden/epics you get is kind of important as well, considering how much dust you get rewarded for getting a golden copy. Plus, as you say, its not like is common to get a legendary ( 1 in 19-20 packs).

Some quick napkin math. After 1000 packs you have ~ 71,000 dust. Assuming at this point you have ever TGT card, the dust value of those cards would be 16,230 (430+1600+5400+8800). This gives you a total dust value of 87,230 for 1000 packs.

This is a per pack value of 87.23 dust. The expected dust per pack value is actually around ~ 108.76, meaning you are short by ~ 20% of the total expected dust.

This isn't a drop in total packs opened by 20% though, sadly, but it probably means that you can craft a legendary after only 60 packs instead of 75 though.

Feels a bit different though when A) you can't trade or borrow cards with your friends, and B) they have no printing costs. I know they have to run servers instead but I find it hard to believe that is as expensive as producing and distributing a physical product.

It is a little disheartening, however I'm hopeful that getting just the very-competitive cards from the set will be much easier / cheaper. Remember, in GvG most of the good cards besides Dr. Boom were at common or rare.

Is it absolutely ridiculous. No one would pay that much up front. F2P mechanics are very clever in extracting money from you over time.

Free fun at first. Anyone know other schemes where they give you a free 'taste'? Then the 'wanting more' desire kicks in and then it's just a matter of time. I myself have only used my spare phone credit to buy packs, so they technically haven't 'got me' yet. But if I'm already legitimising how I'm spending my money on packs, it's a slippery slope down.

Eventually you just accept 'that's the way it is' philosophy like so many have done. Seeing how much other people spend on packs makes it easier for you to spend a little on packs.

I was a bit surprised by this at first, it struck me as counter-intuitive - Is it true that the crafting legendaries first strategy will never have a point where it exceeds the completion percentage of crafting commons first?

Upon further reflection, this does make sense, as each additional card you have regardless of rarity affects the plot by the same amount, such that all complete minus one common looks the same on this graph as all complete minus one legendary. Are both of those lines where they look to be complete starting around 350 actually still missing a few legendaries?

If instead of completion percentage by cards, you graphed by completion percentage by dust value of cards, would the results would be more illuminating?

My intuition is telling me that surely the better crafting strategy for completionists is to craft legendaries first, rather than wasting dust crafting commons and rares that you will surely acquire naturally on the way to opening enough packs to craft all the legendaries?

Yes, the legendaries are the limiting factor, and even crafting legendaries first can't do it fast enough to close out the last few before converging with the commons-first strategy. In the end, both will be missing a few legendaries.

Here's the completion percentages weighted by dust value and put against eachother:

As you can see, though the legendary-first strategy has a slower total-completion rate, it does have a higher value at most points. The reasoning for this is that you aren't likely to pull duplicate legendaries, but you are likely to pull duplicate commons/rares. Hence, if you craft some commons/rares and then buy more packs, that dust spent crafting is more likely to have been wasted than if you crafted legendaries instead.

Thus, the better crafting strategy is to craft legendaries first unless you buy all of your packs at once, in which case they are both equal (you skip inefficient dusting).

So are you saying that at X=400 they haven't reached 100% completion yet? If so, it might make the presentation of data more intuitive if you show the continued climb past X=400 to give context.

Incidentally, what are the Y axis' units? Those numbers don't look like dust.

Thus, the better crafting strategy is to craft legendaries first unless you buy all of your packs at once, in which case they are both equal (you skip inefficient dusting).

Are you sure that's the takeaway? If the graphs converge in the end, then in the end the strategies are equal. In which case maybe the takeaway is to feel free to craft all the commons, rares, and epics you want, because their dust value is literally negligible compared to the amount of dust you'll need for legendaries in the long-haul if you're a completionist.

All the completion rates hit 0.9999 for each rarity around 350, so it is essentially 100% completion (there's not enough cards to be missing 0.01% of them, so I guess it should be rounded).

The Y-axis on that graph was completion percentages scaled to dust costs; I didn't want to rerun everything so I took the per-rarity completions I had and multiplied them by the corresponding dust cost. This is slightly inaccurate, as there are more commons than legendaries for instance, and this assumes an equal quantity, but the fact is that one legendary is worth 1600 dust and all the commons in the set come out to just about one legendary's worth of dust combined, so presumably the scale is accurate enough.

Which is more or less the same, and suggests again that going for legendaries lets you pull slightly ahead in terms of overall value.

In the end the strategies are equal, but the vast majority of players won't get to 300-400 packs. For most people, they're going to be in that 25-250 range where the legendary strategy pulls ahead. I think most people will get enough packs to fill out the commons and rares, so I think the general best advice to give would be to save for epics and legendaries.

The graph didn't include golden cards, so the first value was off by about 20%. Your 90% complete should be closer to 95%, so some arena over the next 6 months will fill out that collection, no problem.

This is fantastic, I suppose the % will be slightly lower than what you've said as well, because let's be honest you're only going to actually want to really acquire half the collection anyway seeming that only that many are really viable or worth crafting! Think i'll open 75-100 Packs and the remaining dust should see me through!

From my simulations you need ~300 packs to get the entire set (Dusting all golden cards, and crafting the needed ones)
You need ~170 packs to get all cards except legendaries (You will still get 7-8 of them)

It's still a not so exact simulation because we don't know the exact number of cards for each rarity

300 is also the threshold that my numbers predict, assuming intelligent dusting. More accurate rarity numbers would certainly help, but I don't expect them to be too different from the estimates based on GvG. However, I remember hearing that this set might have an extra legendary or two compared to the expected ratio, so that would certainly slow things.

So you should hit 100% of the rares by 80 packs. 50 packs should net you 70% of the total rares. If you skip crafting commons, however, these numbers should be a little better. In that case, you get this:

Are you able to make a chart (not taking into account of any crafting) to show the 'crafting dust value' of a pack over many number of packs?

So for example, the very first pack is worth 260 dust (assuming 1 rare and 4 commons, I know its actually more than this but I'm just using this for simplicity sake) since you don't have any of those cards and is how much it costs to craft them.

And then the final pack is 40 dust since you already have all the cards.

This graph shows the average cost of each pack in dust, for instance if you had 299 packs, the new cards in the 300th would cost you 100g or (this suggests) 50 dust. This doesn't take into account the dust you gain from dusting duplicates.

Great job on the simulation, now to be a little cheeky, is there any chance of a packs opened vs dust cost of cards remaining graph. This will let people work out roughly how many packs they will need with a current amount of dust saved up (I have an excessive amount of dust even before disenchanting golden cards that I will probably disenchant)

As you can see, there is essentially no difference. The slight dip around 50packs is due to dusting golden epics/rares and saving the dust for legendaries instead of spending it on replacement epics/rares. After 200 packs, golden cards gives a 2-4% increase in completion fraction.